Please don't eat my house
I've been dealing with carpenter ants for about a year. I wanted to take care of them myself, and thought things were going well since I haven't seen them all winter. Apparently they were just on break. Anyway I'm finding that a year later they STILL HAVEN'T BUILT ANYTHING USEFUL. Worst carpenters ever. I paid a guy stupid sums of money to have them fired. (Well, the fire is a last resort technique).
A cursory examination reveals that mass genocide has completed successfully, thanks to the strange guy who poured gallons of liquid death around my house. Note to friends- do not lick my baseboards or around the windows. I asked if the treatment would kill off any of the other bugs I occasionally see that I don't want to get rid of (silverfish, spiders, beetles, caterpillars, and moths), and he said no, it was primarily formulated for the carpenter bastards. As such, my house geckos should be okay, which makes me happy.
An unfortunate discovery during this process was that I have termites. I found them outside under some rocks, but haven't seen any traces of them inside, which is less bad. They still need to go, and unfortunately the treatment for that is much more involved and expensive, essentially involving drilling holes through my floors and trenching a moat around my house. Granted, it's a small moat (with no water), but I'll have to put in a draw bridge on principle.
I'm not too concerned about the floors because my sewage backed up and flooded all of the downstairs about a month ago and destroyed the wood floors. I'm still dealing with insurance on that, but as is it looks like I'm not going to put wood back in. Instead I'm leaning towards a dark slate tile or polished concrete, though jezebeljade might have some valuable input.
Anyway, that's the WTTM. I'll have some fun posts soon.
A cursory examination reveals that mass genocide has completed successfully, thanks to the strange guy who poured gallons of liquid death around my house. Note to friends- do not lick my baseboards or around the windows. I asked if the treatment would kill off any of the other bugs I occasionally see that I don't want to get rid of (silverfish, spiders, beetles, caterpillars, and moths), and he said no, it was primarily formulated for the carpenter bastards. As such, my house geckos should be okay, which makes me happy.
An unfortunate discovery during this process was that I have termites. I found them outside under some rocks, but haven't seen any traces of them inside, which is less bad. They still need to go, and unfortunately the treatment for that is much more involved and expensive, essentially involving drilling holes through my floors and trenching a moat around my house. Granted, it's a small moat (with no water), but I'll have to put in a draw bridge on principle.
I'm not too concerned about the floors because my sewage backed up and flooded all of the downstairs about a month ago and destroyed the wood floors. I'm still dealing with insurance on that, but as is it looks like I'm not going to put wood back in. Instead I'm leaning towards a dark slate tile or polished concrete, though jezebeljade might have some valuable input.
Anyway, that's the WTTM. I'll have some fun posts soon.